ASYMMETRIC UNIVERSE: New Musical Language

Asymmetric Universe is a new progressive metal slash fusion trio coming out of Turin in Italy who launched their debut EP ‘When Reality Disarticulates‘ back in March. The four-track release is “about the difficulties that mankind faces losing every reference point in life and the resulting research of new coordinates beyond the simple Truth.” Guitarist Federico Vese and bassist Nicolo Vese talked with Prog Sphere.

Define the mission of Asymmetric Universe.

Federico: As Asymmetric Universe we wanted to create a new musical project that involved only young people, in order to have fresh ideas and to find motivated professionals. In fact not only the musicians involved in our EP are younger than thirty years old but even the video makers and the graphic designer! As an independent band, it’s crucial for us to choose people external to the band that believe in the project as we do. We are really proud of it.

Federico: When Nicolò and I started writing “When Reality Disarticulates”, our aim was to find a new musical language that was freed from all the clichè and stereotypes of the genres. So we tried to mix all our influences that cover many different genres: in fact we studied metal, jazz, funk and we produce orchestral music too! For sure we define ourselves a Progressive metal band but in our music the listeners can find a deep contamination of fusion and jazz. Electronic and orchestral arrangement play an important role on the rhythm and harmonic aspect too and they help us to give a modern style to our music. Even though our music can seem theoretically complex, we tried to keep the typical “song” form in our compositions because we wanted to share our message with as many people as possible.

Although “When Reality Disarticulates” is an instrumental release, is there a certain message you are trying to give with it?

Federico: ‘When Reality Disarticulates’ (in italian ‘Quando la realtà si disarticola’) is a verse from a poem by the italian poet Eugenio Montale titled ‘Interno/Esterno’ (I don’t think there’s any english traduction of this poem, anyway it should be ‘Internal/External’), same thing for the title of the first song ‘Trees Houses Hills’ (originally ‘Alberi case colline’) which is taken from one of his poems titled ‘Perhaps one morning walking in dry glassy air’ (originally ‘Forse un mattino andando in un’aria di vetro’). The other titles, except for ‘Hermeneutic Shock’, are from philosophical and poetic works too: ‘Off the Beaten Track’, for example, is the english title of a Martin Heidegger’s work (originally titled ‘Holzwege’) and ‘The Clouds Passing By’ (originally ‘Les nuages qui passent’) is a verse taken from Charles Baudelaire’s poem called ‘The stranger’ (‘L’étranger’). We love Montale’s poetry, we think he can represent at best how mankind reacts discovering that beyond all our values and truths, there’s nothing but the void. We imagined a redemption journey that mankind takes in order to find new interpretations of reality, starting from the fear that we may feel facing the abyss (‘Hermeneutic Shock’), passing through a transvaluation of all values (‘Off the Beaten Track’), ending with the awareness of the death of all possible truths, resulting in a complete devotion to the artistic side of life (‘The Clouds Passing By’). If you buy our EP on Bandcamp, you can find a digital booklet were all songs are briefly explained as a part of a philosophical journey that all men and women, at least once in a lifetime, take. The message behind this EP could sound a bit pessimist, but it’s actually an overcoming of life’s concept as we always knew: if there’s nothing beyond our values, then we have absolute freedom to create something new.

How did you document the music while it was being formulated?

Federico: We are going to release a lot of music videos and playthrough of our songs for sure, but we didn’t documented the writing process of our debut EP. It’s highly probable that we’ll do it for our second release though.

Federico Vese

Is the dynamic flow of the pieces carefully architected?

Federico: Yes for sure! We took care of the songs in their own sections in order to give the idea of the different moments of the abstract journey that each of them represents. The message of the EP is quite complex so each songs represents different moods that you can feel when you’re feeling a deep change in your life. Anyway at the same time we tried not to lose the vision of the big picture: the listener can feel the EP as a whole musical experience, that has its up and down accordingly to the moment of the journey he’s listening to.

Describe the approach to recording the album.

Nicolò: We wanted our EP to sound the more natural possibile, no drums samples were used, just acoustic recordings. The challenge was to give a metal tight sound while still keeping the original intention of each instrument in a more fusion approach, so it required a lot of practice before recording the EP and a lot of concentration while tracking.

How long “When Reality Disarticulates” was in the making?

Nicolò: This was our first release so it took a lot of time to understand how we really wanted it. We wanted to know how to mix well all the genres we studied, and doing so required a lot of study and time. It took many months to understand how to use some demos that we collected over the previous years. Now that we know our language and directions, we cant wait to write more stuff! (maybe we’re already doing that).

Nicolo Vese

Which bands or artists influenced your work on the release?

Nicolò: We come from differente genres. Federico (guitar) studied a lot of metal and fusion artists such as Dream Theater, Guthrie Govan, Pat Metheny, Meshuggah, Periphery, Animals as Leaders. I studied mainly jazz, funk and orchestral music. I love Bill Evans, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Victor Wooten, Marcus Miller and for the orchestral parts I really like Gershwin, Verdi, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov and many others.

Gabriele as a drummer, loves Animals as Leaders, Dillinger Escape Plan and Periphery while as a listener he loves different genre from the classical music of Mendelssohn, the metalcore of Issues to the electronic and hip hop of Amon Tobin and J Dilla.

Gabriele Bullita

What is your view on technology in music?

We think that every mean which helps to create new sounds and timbres, should not be considered as a music enemy. In our EP there’s also a big electronic influence so we totally agree with the research of new sounds that could also go beyond music instruments.

Do you see your music as serving a purpose beyond music?

We think that music should only tell what insipired it. We are against the use of music for politic aims. We want only to focus on art, specifically on the art of sounds, we don’t want to search the Truth throught our music, just some musical enjoyment. All the interesting parts of a musical composition should be in its content not in what it refers.

What are your plans for the future?

Federico: We are going to release more music videos in order to reach as many people as possible through the web. We’ve already been asked by the people of the internet to play live shows in India, Canada and USA but for now there are only plans for a tour in Italy and Europe.